This time with that dodgy ‘literary’ award known hereabouts as the Miles Franklin. With yet another all-male shortlist, a ‘sausage-fest’ is being mooted:

“Another ‘sausagefest’,” literary blogger Angela Meyer wrote on Twitter when the short list was announced in Sydney, a reference to the controversial 2009 Miles Franklin when five male writers fought out the prize, with Tim Winton prevailing.

“At least it won’t cost much to change the letterhead from Miles to Males,” quipped the award-winning novelist Sonya Hartnett.

And on Facebook, novelist and former Meanjin editor Sophie Cunningham chimed in with: “I meant to write myself a novel that would be a Miles Franklin contender today, but then I got my period, so I didn’t.”

At long last, my mother is a regular reader of my blog (and not an occasional reader, as before, even with Jim West’s open letter). You see, one of my nephews thought it was high time she had proper internet access. So what did she do? She went and spent an hour or so tracking back through my blog. And what did she read? ‘Too Many Dicks at the Writing Desk, or, How to Organise a Prophetic Sausage Fest’. Of course, I was visiting her today too, so you can imagine how our discussion went. But I am not one to back down, and sought to explain why it is not purely 14-year old porn. Or, if it is, then so is Ezekiel … Which she seemed to accept, reluctantly. All the same, as I left, she said, ‘don’t post smut on your blog, Roland, and keep your language clean’.

That paper was finally delivered today to a someone puzzled, occasionally tittering and possibly titillated audience, if I may say so with shameless self-promotion. However, there were two highlights in the discussion that followed.

The first came from a fellow presenter, who passed me a note regarding Hosea 4:12, which reads: ‘a diviner’s rod speaks to them’. Is it a reference to a penis?

The second was the concluding question of the session, directed at me by none other than the biblical historian Lester Grabbe, there with his stick. A little earlier I had been expounding on Ezekiel 2-3, in which the prophet eats a phallic scroll covered in words and writing, held out by a mysterious hand, a scroll which was unexpectedly sweet to the taste. I argued that this text may well be read as a reference to auto-fellatio (full section here), backed up by an image of the moment of creation from Heliopolis in which the god sucks himself off.

Now Lester is a really nice bloke, 60-something and an interesting scholar, if somewhat traditional in that strange English way. Lester began by referring to a Monty Python skit in which a man in a raincoat turns up and takes a bit of this and bit of that (I haven’t seen the skit, I must admit) according to his fantasy. Aren’t you, Lester asked, doing a similar thing, picking up bits and pieces and constructing something that is not there (prophetic pen(ise)s and auto-fellatio). In other words, he went on, when Ezekiel 2-3 refers to a hand holding a scroll, might it not be just a hand and not a euphemism for a penis? For as Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

So I replied: in other words, you are accusing me of a little too much eisegesis?

You put the words right in my mouth, said Lester.

That is, I must admit, not an image – of Lester and me – one would like to entertain for too long as one drifts off to sleep.

Having just sombred the crowd at the Historical Materialism conference with my paper on ‘Marxism and Death’, I now realise it marked the beginning of conference silly season. Next is the Society of Biblical Literature, with four papers (I had forgotten about one until recently). So, in a moment of shameless self-promotion, here they are:

Forget the miniscule sausages on the printfektion stuff Deane Galbraith has been peddling, Zazzle has an impressive range of big, juicy sausages in many, many different forms. You might try the simple butcher sausage for starters or perhaps the silly sausage. A little more risqué, bound to give the powers that be at SBL a few nervous twitches, is the black banger, or perhaps the eggs and sausage.

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel

Criticism of Heaven and Earth (paperback)

The complete five-volume set, available from Haymarket Books at a very reasonable price (click on the image).

Marxist Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

Completely revised and largely rewritten. Published by Bloomsbury and available now in various formats on their webpage (click on the image).

Idols of Nations

The new book, by Christina Petterson and me, on the biblical roots of capitalism. Click on the image to order from Fortress Press.

Lenin, Religion, and Theology

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, with a discounted version if you click on the image.

Nick Cave: A Study of Love, Death and Apocalypse

25% discount on paperback: click on image and enter RBOER as discount code. This is the first critical monograph on Nick Cave, focusing on his engagements with religion in music, novels, plays, films and poetry.